Was this an overreaction -- would a suspension have been more a more just punishment than an expulsion?
An Indiana high school senior has been expelled for a Tweet he says was posted from home on his personal account.
"One of my tweets was, f--- is one of this f---ing words you can f---ing put anywhere in a f---ing sentence and it still f---ing makes sense," Garrett High School senior Austin Carroll told Indiana's NewsCenter.
The expulsion comes when Carroll is on the home stretch toward graduation. Carroll's mother Pam Smith said she doesn't agree with her son's Tweet, but doesn't agree with an expulsion either. To her, a suspension lasting several days is more appropriate.
Yeah, it was vulgar and inappropriate -- even the kid agrees with that -- but it was funny, too, and it f------ made a briiliant f------- point f------ memorably. F---- is one of those versatile words that can be used as almost any part of speech.
It's easy to make light of this, but there's a serious issue here. This is just one of many cases of schools trying to deal with what students do with social media and even generally what they do off-campus that might be legal but can be shown to have potential for a negative impact on the school.
Interesting and related: "The nine parts of speech and the f-word" and "WTF did Biden just say?", which is worth if for the Ben Bradlee anecdote alone.
